Kjell

Bjørgeengen

BURNSIDE FLICKER

09-09-2006 - 23-09-2006

This show presents two extremes of the Norvegian artists work:

The footage of musician and storyteller R.L. Burnside (1926 - 2005) was shot at different locations, but mainly in the Hill Country south of Memphis where RL lived for a documentary produced in collaboration with Norwegian journalist Øyvind Pharo.

The flicker image is perhaps the most simple and fundament image we can think of, the oscillation between shades of light and darkness. The flicker videos came about as a counteraction to an easy intellectual approach to art viewing. The videoimages are soundwaves, revealing the identity of sound and image. The flicker works can be harsh to watch, as they are perceived on a physical level. The black and white works are often perceived in colors. There is a threshold that needs to be overcome, so the works in a way resist the viewer or the other way around.

A still image from the video reads as a minimal work, set in motion the work turns into its opposite.

Some of these works may appear as being on the borderline of what could be called art proper. It is like a duchampian effect turned the other way around, the art work, having all the traditional marks of the art making process, turns into a phenomena, and slips across and touch the demarcation line between art and non-art.

Kjell Bjørgeengen performed live video at CCNOA, Bruxelles, with musician Keith Rowe on the 8th of September.

related link: http://www.kjellbjorgeengen.com/